The Long Kill

And here, as if the bitter rules which must guide his life in England did not apply, he had relaxed once more and taken Nguyet into the deepest and most secret places of his soul.

Now she had paid the price.

He stopped so suddenly that other pedestrians bumped into him. But these polite and gentle people showed no irritation or curiosity. He realized he was outside the Hotel de la Paix, one of the city’s many monuments to the French colonial dream. Without conscious decision, he went into the crowded lobby and made his way up the stairs to the top floor. Letting his instinct guide him, he turned left and walked to the end of the corridor. There was a bathroom here. He opened the door and went in.

It was a high airy room. A posse of cockroaches scuttled beneath the high-sided cast-iron bath at his entry. Painfully, he clambered up on the side of the bath and, disturbing another huge cockroach on the dusty windowsill, opened the high narrow window.

It gave him a crow’s-eye view straight down the boulevard. There, somewhere between three and four hundred yards away, was the intersection where the colonel’s jeep would be stopped in just over an hour’s time.

He got down off the bath and went to the door. There was a key on the inside. He removed it, went out, and locked the door behind him.

On his way back down the boulevard, he was even less conscious of his surroundings as he carefully paced out the distance. Three hundred and twenty-five yards. Back in his flat, he packed the few belongings he wanted to take with him in a small grip, slipped a small pair of field glasses he used for bird-spotting into his pocket and repacked the rifle in its box.

He arrived back at the hotel at quarter to six. Approaching one of the hire-car drivers he told him he would be leaving for the airport in about fifteen minutes and gave him the grip to look after. It was Nguyet who had taught him this lesson about most of her people. Trust given without hesitation was nearly always repaid in full.

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